Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tim was dead. His body, as Aunt Fanny had described it, was “torn apart. Just… shredded. Like he was never meant to be anything more than a pile of scraps.”

There wasn’t really all too much to say about him. He worked in communications, was notorious for the jokes he would pull on his fellow robots, shutting doors and creating harmful inconveniences that really just brighten someone’s day. He had no ill will towards anyone on the ship, and until now, it would have seemed the reverse was true as well.

So the crew of the Skeld had gathered in the cafeteria in an attempt to understand who was responsible, and why they had decided, after months of smooth sailing through the cosmos, to lash out with such aggression. To kill someone who– as far as the captain was concerned– never fostered bad blood.

Rodney stood at the head of the round table, his back to the glass wall so he could keep an eye on all three exits simultaneously. He had one hand curled over his mouth, the other resting across his torso and under his elbow. His mind was running too fast for him to take his seat, so he stood behind it instead. It took everything in him not to pace, as if the movement would worsen the tense air in the room. His metal brows were furrowed in thought as he listened to Fanny desperately try to find the words to describe the situation.

She had been the one to find him, after all.

“If I didn’t know him– know his station– I mean, there would just be no way to know who he used to be,” she said. Her voice wavered more than it usually did, thickened as it caught in her throat. She sat opposite the table from Rodney, leaning forward with her elbows resting on the table, palms against her round cheeks in a self-soothing gesture. Her eyes never stayed in one spot too long, and she struggled to make eye contact with anyone else. It was hard to tell whether that was because she was afraid of a potential killer, or riddled with guilt.

“What if– what if it’s just another prank?” Piper asked. She sat adjacent to Rodney, shoulders tucked in and hands clasped neatly between her legs. She didn’t look up as she offered the suggestion. Rodney was more inclined to believe for the time being that everyone was afraid, but it seemed impossible to read how genuine his crew’s body language was.

He tipped his hand forward. “Go on,” he said, not that she needed permission. Everyone spoke freely at meetings, usually respectful towards one another enough that Rodney rarely had to intervene. Still, his gesture encouraged her.

Piper glanced up at him and nodded before looking down again. “I just thought, you know, that this is a spaceship. We’ve got wires running through every hall.” Everyone’s heads turned, locking onto the closest sets running along the walls of the cafeteria before weaving out through various archways. They seemed to be considering it, at least. Perhaps every wire had a use, but it wouldn’t be impossible to hack a few away and shuffle them together with a few metal discs to resemble a certain door-keeping robot. “If someone wanted to play a sick trick on us, it’s not like it would be hard.”

“Why doesn’t anyone speak up, then?” Cappy asked, sitting on Rodney’s other side. She was the only one– save for Ratchet, who looked entirely disinterested in the very concept of a meeting– with her head up, trying to get a good look at the crew, as if she would be able to surmise who the culprit was based on body language alone. “If it was just a prank, they could just come clean, and we could all get on with the day.”

Next to Fanny, Ratchet let out a small, huffing laugh, causing her to wince. “Maybe they don’t want to, now that there’s all this fuss.”

“Or maybe Tim did it to himself,” Madame Gasket echoed, nodding towards her son beside her. She was on Piper’s other side, hands twisting as she lowered her gaze, her ever present smile not wavering for a second.

Rodney glared at her but addressed the group in full. “We can’t rule anything out, but I really doubt this was self-inflicted,” he said. “And I think we’re past the point of thinking this was a joke.” Aunt Fanny nodded her agreement.

“There was someone in communications when you called the meeting,” Bigweld said from next to Fanny. Where Ratchet put her on edge, Bigweld seemed to calm her down. One of his hands rested on her shoulder, and she leaned slightly into the touch.

“Just one?” Rodney asked.

Bigweld nodded. “Fender and I were the last ones to show up, too, and no one left down there when we got up.” That meant the body in communications was more than just wires; somewhere in the pile was Tim’s signal, displaying his location to Admin. He was real.

At the mention of his name, Fender tried to look more calm and composed, propping his red legs up on the table as he leaned back in his seat, but not a single person at the table missed his hand hiding underneath, resting on his sister’s leg. “The Admin table never lies,” Fender said, keeping his tone light. Rodney felt uneasy, knowing that even Fender could tell this wasn’t a time for jokes.

“But someone here is,” Aunt Fanny said, straightening herself up. “Lying, that is.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment, casting nervous glances at one another. The ship was as quiet as it could be, with the soft hum of machinery keeping them all drifting through space.

“Well, it wasn’t me.” Loretta spoke first, arms crossed and something closer to disinterest crossing her face than worry. Something about that put Rodney on edge; the seat beside her was Tim’s, and she didn’t seem to care all that much.

“I didn’t see anything on the cameras,” Piper muttered. “Not that I could have. They just cover a few of the hallways.”

Rodney had a thought. “Did you see anyone going into comms recently? Or leaving?”

But Piper only shook her head. “We don’t have camera coverage on that part of the ship. I didn’t see anyone heading up from shields and the other nearest camera is right outside of the security office.” She looked distraught. “Sorry.”

Fender pulled his feet from the table. “We would have seen it on Admin if something happened,” he said, trying to defend Piper’s lack of information, though he didn’t sound so sure. He looked at Bigweld across the table. “Right?”

“Probably,” was all Bigweld could say. One of the clearest identifiers of a killer, and neither of them could say for certain whether or not something had happened at all, nor could Piper. The Skeld wasn’t designed to catch killers; it wasn’t even designed to board them in the first place.

Ratchet seemed to make that realization just as Rodney did, a smirk ghosting his face while a frown painted Rodney’s. “You aren’t sure? Maybe you’re covering something up,” he said, laughing again as the accusation made Fanny gasp and pull herself away from Bigweld’s touch. The older robot pointed his finger.

“If anyone’s covering something–”

“Guys,” Rodney interrupted, voice firm. Then his voice quieted. “Please. We don’t need to be at each other’s throats.”

“Oh, like someone was clearly at T–” Ratchet tried.

“Enough.”

The quiet returned. Rodney thought of how calm their crew meetings usually were, and how no one really knew how to handle the change in the atmosphere. And then, Rodney thought of Tim.

He was never kind. Any time Rodney stopped into communications to check on him, Tim would tease him relentlessly about the million other things he could be doing instead of wandering aimlessly around the Skeld . And Rodney would say, “I’m the captain ,” in an exasperated and fond tone while Tim rolled his eyes and laughed.

“Shouldn’t captains be busy solving problems? And– oh, look at that– I don’t see any here. Now scram!”

Tim made sure the crew could keep in contact with each other. He crafted together all of the communicators strapped to everyone’s belt, giving the entire crew the ability to send ship-wide messages in case of emergencies.

If this was all an elaborate prank, Tim deserved an award for the setup. It wasn’t a prank. Rodney wished it was anyway.

The door to the kitchen opened, dragging the captain from his thoughts.

Herb balanced a circular tray in his hands, filled with steaming mugs of various oils. He brought them over and set them down on the table, taking his seat between Fender and Gasket. Everyone stared at him closely as he situated himself, and only after he extended an inviting arm did they all reach forward for a drink.

“Thank you, Herb,” Loretta said, sipping quietly at the oil in her hands. Across the table, Fender and Piper tipped the mugs over their heads, sighing as the warm drink rolled over their bolts. One by one, everyone expressed soft gratitudes for the service. The tension in the room loosened, if only for a moment.

Herb held a polite posture, his back straight and eyes tired. He looked at his son. “I figured everyone could use a little calming down,” he said, smiling. “You know, considering this is an emergency meeting and all.”

Rodney nodded towards Herb in appreciation. He held his own mug in his hands, feeling the heat on his fingers. “You aren’t wrong.”

The temporary calm fell short when he noticed the extra mug still sitting on the tray. Herb paid it no mind, remaining calm even though the seat opposite him– Tim’s– was empty. He probably just assumed Tim was running behind.

“Dad,” Rodney began, “you should know what we’ve been discussing.” He looked down, and he could swear he saw his own reflection in the still oil.

Herb spoke gently. “Go ahead,” he said.

He didn’t know how to say it, but he had to. “Tim–”

“Tim fucking died,” Ratchet said, beating the blue robot to the punch with a sarcastic twist on the words. “Just a pile of pieces in communications, apparently.” He shook his head, smiling fondly to himself. “Man, what I would give to have seen it happen.”

“Ratchet!” Gasket reprimanded beside him before Rodney could intervene. “You mean what we would give.”

“What?” Rodney asked, breathless. Everyone else at the table was similarly disturbed by their comments. Everyone had been screened before joining his crew for susceptibility to space illnesses and thoughts that could damage the progress of a mission, but everyone came back clear. He was simply mistaken for thinking death would give Ratchet and his mother pause in their cruel sense of humor.

“Imagine it: like, he’s so small, it must have been meticulous work. I wonder if he gave off sparks, or if he just–”

“That is more than enough,” Rodney interrupted. “That’s your deceased crew member you’re talking about, need I remind you.”

“You said we shouldn’t point fingers,” Cappy said quietly to his left. He sighed and shifted his gaze towards her apologetically.

“I’m not pointing any fingers, I just– look. Ratchet, Gasket, you can’t just say those things and expect us all to sit here and take it. Have some respect.”

Ratchet’s smug expression turned sour in an instant. “Right, because you all respect us . That’s rich, Copperbottom. I never took you for a hypocrite.”

“You aren’t exactly easy to respect,” Loretta chimed in. There were hums of agreement across the table, encouraging her to continue. She didn’t have to be told twice. “You didn’t even want to be a part of this crew. You just chose this over getting fired.”

Where Tim’s banter was always in good fun, something friendly to keep the atmosphere light, Ratchet was cruel and resentful. They all knew his temper put him on bad terms with mission control, so much so that they offloaded him on a long-distance traveler: the Skeld. Told him that he would fix his attitude for the sake of that crew, or he could find a new space shuttle to house him.

Ratchet was bitter about the whole situation, and he still was, regardless of everyone’s attempts to befriend him. He didn’t like Fender or Bigweld from the beginning, how they didn’t seem to take running the ship’s administration seriously in the slightest. He never bothered getting to know them well enough to think otherwise.

He almost found a friend in Cappy, but then he learned she had only been kind to him by Rodney’s request.

“He just needs a friend, Cappy, and if anyone can get through to him, it’s you,” he had told her. Apparently Cappy had accepted his request without a second thought, because she and Rodney were just inseparable like that. Ratchet had never been able to wrap his head around that sort of companionship, but he wasn’t about to try now, not when he was being befriending out of some sort of obligation.

Of course he got along with Gasket, who insisted that the crew was decent only because they didn’t complain about her meal prep skills, but that if she could get along with them, he could too. That hardly counted, though, considering they were related. She was his mother. Of course he was going to stand by her.

Ironically, the robot Ratchet had gotten along with most was Tim. The two would trade snarky comments back and forth whenever Ratchet came in to fix a problem Tim was having with the crew’s comms. The two weren’t close by any means, but if there was anyone Ratchet didn’t feel nauseous referring to as anything more than a coworker, it was the member of the crew who was just reduced to nothing.

No one at the table seemed to understand that. Everyone aside from his mother stared daggers at him. He crossed his arms and pushed his foot against a leg of the table, balancing as his chair began to tip itself backwards.

“So you think I did it, then?” he asked. He could dig a deeper hole if he wanted. “You think I killed little old Tim?”

“That’s ridiculous–” Gasket began, but she was interrupted by Aunt Fanny.

“You saw him more than any of us!” she cried. Bigweld reached out to comfort her, and she quieted down, holding onto him. “Everyone knows how often you went to talk to him. You left the electric room constantly!”

“Because I’m the electrician! I’m supposed to leave my post! And don’t you think that visiting a friend so much would make me less of a suspect?” Ratchet replied. “Real great deductions, there, Fanny.”

Piper rolled her eyes in disgust, looking less fearful and more angry by the second. “You seemed the least surprised by the news when we all sat down.”

Rodney… hadn’t noticed that. Everyone seemed confused or unsuspecting when they gathered in the cafeteria, but maybe Ratchet’s nonchalance was because he already understood what the meeting was for. He kept a close eye on the sleek robot’s body language and kept his mouth shut for the time being.

“He’s also got access to more potential murder weapons than any of us,” Herb added. Gasket shot him a look, eyebrows raised as if challenging him to say more. He recoiled slightly and shrugged. “Sorry. I just mean none of us are in weapons all that often, and he’s got things like wire cutters and soldering irons, doesn’t he?”

“If you don’t watch your mouth, I might just ask to borrow those wire cutters,” Gasket hissed, the drills on her hands beginning to whir.

“That’s not helping,” Loretta said, glaring at Gasket. Rodney quirked a brow at her. “What? It’s true. And it didn’t seem like you were gonna point it out any time soon.”

“I was just…” Rodney started to say, but he trailed off. Just… what? Watching his crew accuse one another of murder? He wasn’t making any deductions from the current conversation. He was doing nothing other than trying to observe everyone at the same time and failing.

“If you let them talk long enough,” Cappy said, once she realized Rodney wasn’t going to continue speaking, “they’ll just incriminate themselves.”

“Fuck off, Cappy,” Ratchet said, voice low. “You too, Loretta.” He blinked, thinking for half a second, before leaning forwards. There was some sort of upset in his eyes, despite how much he seemed to want to hide it. His chair came back into contact with the floor with a loud clang, and he stood so quickly it scraped across the ground, screeching. “Actually, fuck all of you. I didn’t kill Tim . I just thought this was the most interesting thing that’s happened on this ship in weeks. You really think I’d do this just because I don’t like any of you?” He laughed, but it was bitter in comparison to the chuckles he let out earlier. “I’m not that stupid.”

“What do you mean?” Rodney asked.

“He means that it’s obvious he would be our number one suspect,” Piper said, her eyes wide with the realization.

“Bingo,” Ratchet said. “But if you want me to be a villain, fine. Enjoy keeping up the ship’s electricity. I’ll just take over in communications.”

He turned and left the cafeteria without another word, but not without extending his middle finger up at the table. Everyone watched him go, shocked into silence. Herb’s drinks weren’t doing much to soothe anyone anymore.

When he made it through the southern door, Rodney blinked away his surprise and turned to his right. “Piper, what did you mean by that?”

She glanced up at him. “Well- isn’t it obvious? He’s the angriest out of all of us. The most sadistic.”

“Excuse you,” Gasket interrupted, though it wasn’t clear whether she was defending her son or throwing her own hat into the ring.

Piper ignored her. “If anyone here was going to… kill someone… he would be the most likely. It’s a natural thing to suspect.”

“What a horrible thing to say!” Herb said. The table waited for him to continue, to voice his disagreement with Piper. He stayed quiet.

“I wouldn’t put it past him.” Fender locked eyes with everyone as their heads turned towards him and shrugged. “He’s on his way to communications as we speak. Maybe he’s trying to dispose of the evidence! I’m just bummed I wasn’t the first to call him sus.” His face fell, and he slouched down in his chair.

Rodney was more bothered by the first half of this statement. “He’s heading to comms…” What would he do there? It was reckless to abandon his duties as an electrician, especially when communications’ duties weren’t nearly as high on the list of ship priorities. There really was nothing in there besides Tim’s remains, if Aunt Fanny was telling the truth, and Rodney would be surprised if she had been lying.

He looked up, realizing everyone was waiting for him to continue where he had trailed off. “I’m going after him. This meeting is adjourned.”

“What? Just like that?” Fender asked. “But there’s a mystery afoot!”

“I know, and I’m… I’m trying to figure it out. For now, everyone needs to return to their stations, and don’t abandon post. Not without my clearance, at least. Fender, Bigweld, I need you to report to me immediately if anyone is where they shouldn’t be.” The robots nodded. “Cappy, prepare– make preparations for Tim in the medbay.”

She frowned but nodded all the same. “I’ll have them ready.”

Rodney didn’t acknowledge her, stepping around the table and falling into a light jog to get to the edge of the cafeteria. “Piper, roll over all the security footage from this morning. Just… see if you can find anything. Maybe we missed something. And nobody travels alone from here on out, in case this wasn’t a one-off thing.”

“Do you think it was?” Fanny asked, clasping Bigweld’s hand in her own.

Rodney stopped at the archway. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m not taking any chances. Not when there’s a killer among us.” He left the cafeteria, following Ratchet towards communications.

Behind him, Fender began to laugh. “Almost,” he muttered to himself.

~

Earlier.

Tim sat at the south end of the room, watching the crew’s communication on the screen before him with a light smile.

Fender: HELP

Fender: IN ADMIN

Rodney: What’s happening?

Fender: IT’S TERRIBLE!

Bigweld: I seem to be having trouble with swiping my identification card.

From his seat, Tim opened a new window and pulled up the status of everyone’s– well, everyone’s everything. By the time he returned to the chat to provide updates, he had to catch up on a backlog of messages.

Rodney: Tim, are you able to check this out? Or Ratchet?

Fender: THIS IS LIFE OR DEATH

Fender: DO YOU HEAR ME?

Bigweld: It’s not too serious. Fender was able to log us into the Admin table.

Fender: LIFE. OR. DEATH

Loretta: Stop spamming the chat, love.

Fender: sorry!!

Fender: but i’m so dead serious this seems like an issue

Ratchet: I can check it out. Be there in 5

Rodney: Is anyone else having similar issues?

Piper: All good in security!

Loretta: Nothing wrong at the helm.

Cappy: Same here, though the door has been giving me some trouble.

Rodney: How so?

Cappy: It closed for no discernable reason earlier, and my card wouldn’t reopen it. Fixed itself about ten seconds after, though, so I didn’t think it was much of an issue.

Tim tilted his head at the screen. That was odd. Not the fact that the doors re-opened; he had coded the system to automatically unlock the ship’s doors if Admin identified someone inside so people didn’t get trapped in the reactor in case of a hazard or something. He didn’t notice any connectivity issues on the ship that would have caused a problem. He typed out a message and got to work checking on the ship’s mechanics while he waited for a reply.

Tim: i didn’t see anything weird on your card, bigweld, but I restarted it remotely. if that doesn’t fix it i doubt you’ll have any luck with ratchet, he sucks at his job

Ratchet: Fuck off

Rodney: Mission control can see you swear, you know.

Ratchet: Don’t care, didn’t ask

Tim: Also, Cappy, I’ll check out the door logs, see if I can’t figure out what happened

Cappy: Thanks!

Bigweld: didn’t work, Tim :(

Tim: Nooo :(

Fender: WE’RE FUCKED

Fender: i mean doomed

Fender: rodney please let me live i have a wife and children

Loretta: Just a girlfriend, actually, so murder is still on the table!

FENDER: NO!!

Tim snorted at that.

Fender: ratchet is here now and working with bigweld btw, we’ll keep you guys updated

The chat quieted down after that. Fender always had a way of getting people to talk, even if they only popped in to tell him to shut up. The crew-wide chat was supposed to be reserved for emergencies– that was Tim’s intention when he passed the communicators out to everyone, at least– but Fender had a way of turning everything into an emergency. The Skeld was a decent-sized ship, after all, and sometimes it was better to reach someone through message rather than leaving their post.

Even so, Tim found it amusing how everyone sounded so much like themselves even over text chat. He usually didn’t receive visitors unless communications were malfunctioning. And it didn’t happen often; Tim considered it proof that he was good at his job.

What could he say? He was dedicated to his work. So dedicated and immersed in checking the timestamps on door closings from the morning that he noticed immediately when the door behind him slid shut, not because he heard it, but because he read it.

> 07:52:30: door.closed:MEDBAY set to TRUE by [REDACTED].

> 07:52:38: door.closed:MEDBAY set to FALSE by Cappy.

> FAILED door.closed:MEDAY set to FALSE. Reason: higher clearance required.

> 07:53:00: door.closed:MEDBAY set to FALSE by SYSTEM.OVERRIDE. Reason= “auto-unlock just saved your ass -T”

> 09:15:04: door.closed:COMMUNICATIONS set to TRUE by [REDACTED].

Tim swung around in his chair, waving a mitten-shaped hand at the visitor. “Hey–” he began to say, but the words died in his throat in an instant.

The room was dark with the door shut. Tim hadn’t realized the only light in communications came from the hallway behind him and the computer screens throughout the room. With the main source of light cut off, an ominous glow fell over the other robot’s figure. Their head was tipped to the side, eyelights ceasing to glow just for a moment as they blinked. Tim’s gaze fell to the ax– at least, that’s what the silhouette looked like in the dark– in their hand.

He didn’t know they had axes on the Skeld . Maybe in case of a fire, or something? But that didn’t make sense. Not knowing scared Tim.

“Hey,” the intruder said, voice calm and even. They took a step closer.

“Um… who– who closed the door?” Tim asked, releasing a nervous laugh. It was a joke between him and the other crewmates. Tim always closed the door.

At least, he thought he always did, until reading the logs. Until just now.

The robot in front of him shrugged. “Does it matter?” they asked.

Before Tim could respond, the robot lunged toward him, ax raised.

Tim really hadn’t stood much of a chance at all.

> 09:15:34: door.closed:COMMUNICATIONS set to FALSE by SYSTEM.OVERRIDE. Reason= “auto-unlock just saved your ass -T”

Chapter Text

The lights were on. That was the first thing he noticed.

Tim always kept them off. Seeing the room in its entirety– where the floor became the walls and everything felt smaller– just confirmed to Rodney that he was really dead and gone, in the end.

It was quiet, save for Ratchet’s meddling. He stood with his back to Rodney, up near the monitor at the edge of the room. His shoulders shifted as he moved with a calm sort of chaos, rhythmic and erratic all at once. Occasionally he would pause abruptly, shoulders tucking close to his head before relaxing and beginning to work again. He hadn’t seemed to notice yet that Rodney had followed him here.

Rodney watched him from the doorway quietly for as long as he could. Something kept him from stepping past the threshold, as if communications had become some sort of crime scene, but that left him feeling strange about the electrician who had crossed the nonexistent tape.

Ratchet’s body language wasn’t calm by any means, but he didn’t seem to have any of the same qualms about entering the room or doing… whatever it was he was busying himself with.

Rodney could only bear to say nothing for so long, and eventually he spoke. “Ratchet.”

The slate robot simply tilted his head in response, stretching his neck with the motion and rolling his head. “Captain,” he replied, his tone matching Rodney’s. He hadn’t yet turned to face him, keeping his hands busy.

“What are you doing?” Rodney asked carefully. He didn’t like knowing Tim was within Ratchet’s grasp. He didn’t think he could stop his movements if he tried. The duality between action and paralysis was sickening.

“I’m just… taking care of him,” Ratchet said. He took a deep breath and let it go, his hands coming to rest against the desk. A stray bolt rolled across it, twisting Rodney’s stomach, but before he could speak, Ratchet added, “I know what you’re thinking, but somebody has to.”

Rodney’s eyes flickered as he processed the words. Ratchet wasn’t here to hide anything, or make some sick, mocking display– the fact that the idea had passed through Rodney’s mind was a truth he decided to shelve for later. He realized, slowly, that Ratchet was here to mourn a friend. To pick up the pieces that were left of him.

“Where– where are you gonna put him?” he asked, even if he shouldn’t have. Maybe as captain, it was his job to handle this… sort of thing. And he knew the protocol for deceased crew members– they had all received training for it, with space travel being a fatal line of work.

If Ratchet was already on it, though, Rodney wasn’t inclined to stop him. Not when his feet stayed firmly planted in the hallway. That was why he asked. Not because he had a lingering fear of what Ratchet would do on his own.

With his expression walking the line between sorrow and rage, Ratchet turned to face his captain. He was struggling to process his emotions as much as Rodney, it seemed, as he shrugged and said, “I hadn’t thought that far ahead, I guess. Do we plan on following policy?”

It seemed strange, to Rodney, the way Ratchet had walked in here with such courage only to not have a plan of any kind. He would have said something, but the words died in his throat as Ratchet’s movement gave him a full, nauseating view of Tim’s remains for the first time.

He thought he would have the vocabulary to describe the scene as Aunt Fanny did, knowing some day soon mission control would ask him what happened. He thought he would be able to give a summary so gruesome and devastating they would have regretted asking. He wanted to give mission control an ounce of the sickness he and his crew felt at that morning’s meeting.

But really, Tim was just a small pile of torn apart metal discs and wires on the desk. A few of his bolts were nearby. And that was all. It was disturbing, but he wasn’t as mangled as some part of Rodney wished he was.

Fanny was right. Rodney couldn’t recognize him anymore in death.

“Rodney?” Ratchet prompted.

The blue robot nodded his head and looked away from Tim to signal that Ratchet had been heard. He had never actually seen a dead robot before. Not this close, not in so many parts, not this personal. He was shocked by the way his voice wavered as he spoke. “There should be a supply of body containers in the medbay. I, um– I told Cappy to get one ready for us after you left.”

Ratchet glanced down at Tim, losing himself in thought. He brought a hand to cover his mouth, tapping a finger against his cheek. If Rodney held his breath, he could hear the gears turning in the other robot’s head. He wished he could just read Ratchet’s mind, but the man was stoic and composed, even here. Even now.

Then he asked, “How are we supposed to get him from here to there? Just carry him in our hands?” and Rodney felt his throat close. He hadn’t thought about that, and neither had Ratchet, until now, it seemed.

“No,” he said, trying to sound sure. There had to be some way to get Tim to a body box without… “No, I don’t think we have to–”

Ratchet didn’t let Rodney finish his sentence, already scooping up Tim’s remains into his hands, palms cupped to keep bits from falling onto the floor and a carefully crafted neutral expression on his face. When his hands were full, he turned to Rodney. His brows furrowed. “What? He asked, confused.

Rodney realized he was staring at Ratchet with thinly concealed horror, lips pressed into a thin line as he watched his crew be scraped into a bowl-shaped hand. He wiped the expression away with a shake of his head and tried to explain himself. “You’re just– you–”

“Look,” Ratchet said, moving to leave communications. He was face to face with Rodney before the robot had even processed that he was moving. “We can stand here and talk it over, or we can just get it over with. And I’d prefer the latter.”

Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion. Rodney had barely processed that Ratchet had moved, barely registered their gazes locking on one another, before Ratchet was side-stepping past his captain and heading on a path to the medbay.

Rodney scrambled for his communicator, sending a quick message before hurrying after Ratchet. Something didn’t sit right in the way he was still so composed, and Rodney didn’t trust either of them to be alone right now. Whether it was because of his own lack of composure, his worry regarding Ratchet’s general sense of chaos, or the idea that a killer was still roaming the halls of the Skeld, Rodney didn’t care to determine.

Rodney: On our way

Cappy: Awesome.

He cracked a small smile, allowing himself a bit of relief in reading the sarcasm that dripped from Cappy’s reply. When he replaced his communicator on his belt and looked up, Ratchet was leading them both towards the north end of storage. He glanced over at the western doorway across from them, the path obscured by a pile of crates and shipping barrels, and he frowned.

“Ratchet,” Rodney said carefully, “I don’t think we should go that way.”

“What’s wrong with the cafeteria?” he asked. “It’s the fastest route.” When Rodney didn’t reply, he turned around and saw the captain staring at him with an eyebrow raised and his arms crossed, nervous and judgmental. Before he could retort, he remembered what he was carrying and sighed. “I see your point.”

Not only would they pass by Fender and Bigweld in Admin on their way up, but anyone who had hung around the cafeteria following the abrupt end to the meeting would be blessed with a face full of corpse.

“We’ll go the long way around.” That way, they’d only have to go by security.

So they did, passing through the lower engine to the upper without stopping in to check on Piper. She had surely seen them on the cameras as they came through. Rodney doubted she would blame them for having other places to be. He didn’t want her to see anything more than she had to.

He did, at least, glance at the reactor on his left, listening to the soft bubbling and hum of the machinery before continuing on.

“I didn’t mean it, by the way,” Ratchet said shortly after. “About not keeping up in electric. I’m still going to do my job.”

“I know,” Rodney replied.

The rest of the walk went by quietly, and even with the circumstances, Rodney found himself feeling more comfortable at Ratchet’s side. Sure, he was the official captain of the Skeld , and it was his responsibility to keep everything under control and running smoothly. And it wasn’t hard to see everyone’s opinion of Ratchet with how quickly they pointed fingers at him.

Even Rodney considered him a suspect when they were all at the table.

But the longer he traveled with this crew, the more everyone felt like an equal to him, all intelligent in their own right and bringing solutions to problems before Rodney even noticed they had arisen, half the time. And even with his suspicions and fears, he was grateful to Ratchet, as they walked, for putting on a brave face and getting things done.

He made it easier for Rodney to calm himself.

When they rounded the corner of the upper engine and approached the door to the medbay, he put a hand on Ratchet’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said simply. Ratchet raised a brow in confusion, so he added, “for carrying Tim.” For easing my anxiety, so I can ease everyone else’s.

“Oh,” Ratchet said, blinking. “Yeah. No problem.”

Cappy was doing well at keeping herself busy as they entered the medbay. She stood towards the back of the room, flipping through the pages of what appeared to be a quite large medical book on the counter.

On a cot near the ventilation shaft in the corner, she had prepared a body container, as promised. The box itself was shallow and made of metal, running the length and width of the cot. It was far too big for a robot of Tim’s size, but the containers were mass-produced. The crew couldn’t exactly afford the luxury of a custom coffin with how far out of orbit they were.

Ratchet cleared his throat, drawing Cappy’s gaze up from her reading. She looked at the two robots quietly for a moment, and then her eyes fell to Ratchet’s arms. Her features dropped slightly. “Damn,” she said with a sympathetic wince. “It’s one thing to hear it from Fanny, but to really see it…”

“Yeah,” Rodney agreed. He thought the same thing.

Ratchet stepped further into the medbay, making his way towards the box in the corner to get Tim off his hands. As he did, Rodney moved over beside Cappy and peeked at the book on the counter. “What’s this?” he asked, trying to get everyone’s attention on a less grim subject, even if the focus didn’t last long.

Cappy chose to ignore the sound of pieces of metal landing in the box behind them. “I was doing some reading on psychopathology,” she explained, gesturing to the page she was open to. “I started with psychopathy, sociopathy, all the cliché stuff from the movies that explain why people would murder someone. I skimmed a few passages on anger and stress, trying to see if there was some motive to this.”

“We’re certain it’s murder, then?” Ratchet asked. He picked at his fingers near the cot as if to pull Tim’s springs from the hinges on his hands.

Cappy shot him a look. “We could perform an autopsy, but I’m certain it’s not rust and I doubt he would be capable of doing… all that to himself,” she said. “It’s not natural. I can tell that much from here.”

Ratchet merely shrugged in response, not looking at the makeshift casket lying open beside him. He picked at his fingertips, filling the room with a soft scraping noise.

“Did you find anything?” Rodney asked instead. The page Cappy had open in the book didn’t say much about psychopaths or anything else she had mentioned. He guessed she had more to say on the matter.

Cappy shook her head. “Not there. We screened everyone on the crew before launch and nobody displayed symptoms. And even if they did, a personality disorder wouldn’t make someone a killer by default. This, unfortunately, is not a simple issue of diagnosis and treatment.”

She pointed at the book in front of her, to the open, unrelated page. “Then I started looking elsewhere, specifically in those horror story history books they load on every ship about past mutiny, space madness, and everything else of the like.” Rodney and Ratchet stayed quiet so she could continue explaining the situation, but Cappy simply let out a huff and crossed her arms. “It hasn’t been very useful. I thought I could match someone’s behavior to a past event and identify Tim’s killer, but…”

Rodney nodded in understanding. “But this isn’t a hostile takeover.”

“Exactly.”

“How do we know that?” Ratchet asked. Cappy and Rodney turned around to face him, both with their arms crossed. They could have been mirrors, if it weren’t for Cappy’s confused expression and Rodney’s hurt.

“What do you mean?” Rodney asked, looking scared from the mere suggestion.

Ratchet spared a moment’s glance at Tim– at the wires he used to be– and said, “We don’t know who did this, and we don’t know how. Nobody on this crew had something against him, right? So why kill him? We can’t be simultaneously certain that this was a murder and also that it wasn’t a one-off thing.”

Cappy’s expression shifted towards anger, her brows pulling forward and mouth curling towards the floor. “So what do you think it is, then? Someone thought it would be fun to take a life, and they might do it again? Do you really want everyone to think that?”

“I’m just saying. There’s not enough information to draw those sorts of conclusions just yet,” Ratchet said. He stopped picking at the edges of his fingers, crossing his arms and leveling a calm gaze towards Cappy.

She pressed her fingers to her temple, slowing the churning gears in her mind. “We’re all scared enough as it is. Uncertainty is going to make things worse, and we don’t need people breaking into weapons to arm themselves against a supposed serial killer.”

“So you’d rather come to a speedy, potentially incorrect decision about the state of the crew? You want people not to be able to defend themselves? You’d rather the killer get away with it again?” Ratchet laughed. “That’s the most suspicious thing I’ve heard today.”

“I’ll tell you what’s suspicious–” Cappy started, finger flicking outwards to point accusingly at Ratchet.

Rodney shook his head, glancing between them. He had to diffuse the argument.. “Guys, you’re both making good points here–”

Neither of them seemed to appreciate Rodney’s centrist approach, because their ever-growing upset expressions reeled on him. Cappy took in a breath to start arguing again, but the words never came.

Red light filled the room as an alarm started blaring across the ship, a loud, long pitch ringing in everyone’s ears.

“What is it?” Cappy asked, looking up at the ceiling. Rodney practically tore his communicator from his hip and he let out a hiss.

“It’s the reactor,” he said. Cappy groaned.

“Just our luck,” Ratchet said, deadpan.

“Real convenient that the ship’s core starts breaking down right now,” Cappy replied, throwing one hand to her hip and pointing the other in Ratchet’s face.

“What are you even implying?” he asked. “Not everything that happens on this ship is my fault, as much as you wish it was.”

“I never said that,” Cappy insisted. “But if that’s where your guilty ass jumped first thing, then–”

Ratchet tossed an aggravated hand into the air. “I don’t even have my communicator out right now! I couldn’t sabotage the ship even if I wanted to, which I don't.”

Rodney was listening, but he was also trying to read and respond to the frantic messages flying across his communicator.

Loretta: I’m sure everyone is aware, but there’s a problem with the reactor…

Bigweld: Sure am. Piper, you’re closest right now, since you’re still in security.

Piper: Yeah but I can’t fix it alone

Piper: and Rodney said not to leave our stations

Fanny: My communicator has a countdown on it, is that because of the alarms?

Rodney: Yeah. It’s how long we have until the reactor shuts down.

Fanny: What do we do?

Gasket: someone needs to reset it, obviously.

Loretta: shit. Well I’m in Nav, I can’t make it over there in time

Bigweld: That’s not true.

Rodney looked up, not realizing he had tuned out Cappy and Ratchet’s argument until he was focusing on them again. They were nearly at each other’s throat, glaring with all the rage of– well, of a killer.

“If anyone else dies on this ship–” Cappy started.

“You’ll what? Dig out another body box? It’s less work for you–”

“You probably just want us all to suffer because nobody likes you–”

“ Guys!” Rodney shouted. They quieted down and each took a step back in shock, but neither lost their aggressive expressions. He considered it enough of a success to continue speaking. “Now isn’t the time for this shit. We’re on a time limit.” He shot off a quick message on his communicator.

Rodney: I’ve got it covered. Nobody leaves their stations, not alone.

A few members of the crew voiced their acknowledgement as Rodney slipped the communicator back against his side and addressed the robots in front of him.

“Ratchet, you’re coming with me to fix the reactor,” he said, leaving the other robot no room for argument. When he issued the command, something clicked in both his and Cappy’s expression regarding how dire this could be if left unattended. Ratchet simply nodded, backing down from Cappy for the time being.

She had the decency to look ashamed for losing sight of the moment’s importance, rubbing one of her arms sheepishly.

Rodney paid the action no mind. “Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be back once we’ve recalibrated the reactor and gotten things under control,” he told her.

“I’ll just… okay,” she said, trailing off. She glanced at the clock on her communicator. “You should get going.”

She didn’t have to tell them twice. Ratchet was already out the door, not bothering to wait for Rodney even with the risk of traveling alone. For the second time, Rodney had to race to catch up with him.

“Ratchet,” he said. They had just reached the upper engine, and Ratchet was staying a few paces ahead of his captain. He showed no sign Rodney had been heard, so the robot tried again. “Ratchet!”
“What?” Ratchet asked with a frustrated tone, not slowing down.

“You can’t– don’t go off on your own like this, it’s not safe.”

They left the engine. Rodney closed a step’s worth of distance between them. Ratchet scoffed. “You’re right beside me. Besides, I think I can handle myself. I’m not a pile of scraps like–” he froze in place.

“Ratchet–”

“Nope. Let’s get one thing straight,” he said, spinning around to face Rodney. The anger was back in his tone, facial features matching the beat as his eyes fell into a harsh squint. “I’m not like you. I’m not like any of you. I’ve got a job to do, and I’m not gonna let the threat of a killer blow this ship to bits, so I’m going to the reactor like you told me, and I’m fixing it.” He didn’t wait for a response, turning on his heel and continuing his way to the reactor.

Rodney wanted to retort and tell him that was no way to talk to his captain, that he had a place on this ship no matter how much people didn’t trust him, but Ratchet yet again made a good point. The timer on Rodney’s communicator read just under two minutes. There wasn’t time to argue in a hallway right now, just like there wasn’t time for it in the medbay.

They really needed some practice in communication without argument on this ship. Rodney made a mental note. “We’re talking about this, once things have calmed down,” he said, continuing to follow Ratchet.

Fear had already taken hold of the crew, regardless of Cappy’s prior argument to avoid mongering everyone. Rodney was going to get everything under control as soon as the reactor was fixed.

They reached the reactor room with haste. If it weren’t for the alarms blaring across the ship and the red hue the usual blue tubes lining the reactor’s core had taken on, Rodney wouldn’t have been able to tell there was an issue in the slightest. Nothing was broken, but something was still wrong.

Ratchet stepped up to the core and scanned his hand against the front sensor, pulling up the machine’s vitals to diagnose the issue. A soft red glow illuminated his face from below as he worked.

Rodney came up alongside him and shifted his gaze between the robot and the panel. Ratchet’s red hue was fitting against the gray shade of his metal, Rodney noted, where his own blue had merely taken on a magenta shift. He nearly blended in with the floors themselves.

“It should be fine with a reset,” Ratchet said, clearly not analyzing the colors of the room as Rodney had been.

He hadn’t meant to get distracted. He tilted his head in confusion. “What, just resetting the system?” he asked, gesturing to the blaring lights as he spoke. “This seems excessive for a simple reset.”

Ratchet nodded, stepping away from the admin panel. He waved his hand as he gave an explanation. “Well, something– someone, maybe– tripped the reactor, so the panel thinks there’s an issue to melt down over. I think it’s supposed to be a self-destruct function.”

“Why would it self-destruct over a simple trip?!” Rodney shouted. He was realizing the Skeld had some serious design flaws if anyone was able to hack the system so lethally.

“I told you, dumbass. Somebody–” Ratchet pulled out his communicator as he spoke and stopped himself mid-sentence with a gasp. “We’ve only got a minute left! Reset now, theorize later!” He backed away from the panel in a hurry, sparing Rodney a brief nod towards the sensor screen on the south end of the room before rushing himself to the north.

Rodney understood the message clearly, turning on his heel and rushing over to the screen. He knew how this was supposed to work; it wasn’t his job to maintain the reactor, but everyone had been trained on its reset protocols, just in case.

Ship design be damned, at least his crew was well-trained.

He placed both his metal palms against the panel on the wall, watching as a thin blue line lit up and began scanning the shape of his hands from the top down. When it reached the edge of his wrists at the bottom of the screen, the line slowly slid back up to the top of the scanner.

It had never felt like such a slow process before, but then again, Rodney had never messed with the reactor while it was actively shutting itself down. The fast, repetitive sirens only worked to speed up the gears in his chest.

He waited a moment for the screen to turn green and indicate he could pull away. It wouldn’t change color until Ratchet had done the same reset on his side, so he had to wait. Why the reactor required two people for this, Rodney could never understand.

The scanner went dark.

The scanner wasn’t supposed to go dark.

It was supposed to stay partially lit, the blue line continuing to scan or idling somewhere on the screen as long as Rodney kept his hands in place. But the sensor had just shut itself off. He felt a wave of panic roll over his shoulders and through his exoskeleton and shuddered.

“Come on…” he muttered. He gently pulled his hands away before replacing them against the sensor screen, holding his breath.

The scanner came back to life, the same blue line sliding down from the top of the screen and rolling back upwards at a robotic snail’s pace.

He waited.

The screen went dark again.

His communicator beeped once, then again, and again. Rodney knew what it meant without needing to look: they only had twenty seconds to finish the reset before the reactor shut down completely.

“Ratchet,” he said, not sure if he could hear from the opposite end of the room. He couldn’t turn his head well to see him while keeping his own palms flat against the scanner. “Ratchet, why isn’t it working?” He removed his hands and pressed them against the scanner again, more frantic than before, and he watched the line do its work and felt his gears quicken and begin to grind harder when still, no green light appeared. His communicator continued to make urgent noise, but Rodney hadn’t been counting the seconds. All he knew was each sound was one less second until the Skeld was no more.

“Ratchet!”

“I’ve got it!” came the response, muffled by the alarms and the fuzz clouding Rodney’s head in stress. Beep .

One more time, he replaced his hands on the screen, and watched as the light line appeared and slid downwards. Beep.

What had taken Ratchet so long? Beep.

The line raised back to the start, the scan of Rodney’s hands complete. Beep.

He held his breath. Beep.

And waited. Beep.

The panel’s screen turned a bright green. His communicator went silent.

Rodney released a heavy breath, not even realizing when he had started holding it. He nearly fell to his knees in relief, but stayed standing only to keep his hands against the scanner a bit longer, as if pulling them away now would undo the reset.

Behind him, he heard Ratchet’s feet as he stepped back towards the reactor core. “Everything’s online and working,” he said.

“Good,” Rodney said with another sigh of relief. He took a hard breath in after, pulling away from the scanner’s panel and shaking out the lingering fear in his hands. Then he took out his communicator.

Cappy: You guys couldn’t have cut that any closer if you tried.

Fender: lol was everyone watching the timer countdown?

Fanny: Of course I was! We could have died!

He slowly typed out a message to everyone, making sure he didn’t press the wrong keys as his fingers twitched.

Rodney: Sorry about that, guys. We got it under control.

Before anyone could reply, he was putting the device away. He couldn’t bring himself to feel guilty about not checking in with everyone immediately after. Instead, he returned his focus to Ratchet, who was already moving to leave the room entirely.

“Where are you going?” Rodney asked. Again, he was overcome with his suspicious feeling. Here he was, a shivering mess at the life of the Skeld nearly coming to an abrupt end, and Ratchet was walking off as though nothing was wrong in the first place.

Ratchet paused. He turned and titled his head at his captain. “Isn’t it obvious? This was sabotage. We’re right across the way from the security office.” When Rodney blinked slowly and said nothing, Ratchet sighed. “I’m saying that Piper might have seen something on the cameras. Someone messing with something they shouldn’t have,” he said with a deadpan tone.

Rodney’s confusion didn’t waver. He didn’t want to start another argument, but he needed to press a touch further. “She could have just messaged me if something was off,” he said.

“Sure,” Ratchet replied, agreement coming easily to him. “I’m still going to check. If… that’s alright?” He didn’t bring up the fact that Rodney wasn’t keen on checking his messages and definitely wouldn’t see anything at the moment if Piper was trying to contact him.

Rodney couldn’t really debate it. “It’s… not a bad idea. Go ahead.” He glanced around the reactor with an absent mind. It felt strange to be in such a calm room when everything felt so dire moments ago. It felt even more strange to be discussing an allegation as serious as sabotage as though it was small talk shared over lunch. He rolled over the calm and eerie vibes he felt at the same time whenever Ratchet was in the room and said, “I think I’ll head to the medbay and reconvene with Cappy.”

Ratchet merely nodded in response, and they both left the reactor. Just before they split off, Rodney tapped Ratchet on the shoulder, stopping them both in the hallway.

“Once I’m done in the medbay, I’ll come find you. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten that we still need to talk.” They’d be getting better at having civil discussions any minute now, if Rodney had anything to say about it as captain.

Rolling his eyes, Ratchet said, “Of course you haven’t.” But then he smirked, and Rodney returned the expression, and just like that, he had forgotten about his suspicions again.

They parted ways only for a moment. Ratchet walked into security with his hands calmly tucked behind his back, and Rodney turned to make his way back to Cappy.

Before Rodney had even reached the threshold to the upper engine, though, Ratchet had stepped out from security, breathing heavily.

“Captain,” he hissed.

Rodney turned around. The look on Ratchet’s face made a dreadful pit sink in his stomach.

“She’s dead.”

Chapter Text

Piper Pinwheeler never really wanted to be a security guard. She wanted to help people, sure, but she meant more along the lines of what Cappy did in the medbay, running evaluations on the crew and patching up injuries. She wanted to fix people, like Rodney. She didn’t want to sit in a security office staring at a screen while the world went by. But the position had been gracefully bestowed upon her at Fender’s own insistence. It was the safest place he could imagine for her to be– safer than the medbay, at least, which instead surrounded her with sharp objects and scrap metal and glass vials that could shatter.

“You’d be the first line of report and defense against intra-ship conflicts!” he had said. And when Piper didn’t buy it, he sighed. “You’ll be right next to the medbay. And as far from weaponry as possible.”

It was kind of him to consider her proximity to the place she wanted to be, but it wasn’t enough. She fought like hell for Rodney to place her anywhere else on the ship. She even offered to run the trash from the cafeteria to the chute in storage and bring a hot cup of oil to Loretta in navigation whenever she asked. She would do everything else on top of the duties required of a medical officer, if she had to. Anything to avoid sitting in a chair, doing nothing more than watching a couple of blank cameras all day.

Anything to get her one step closer to piloting a ship of her own, someday.

Aunt Fanny had tried to console her, but everything out of the older robot’s mouth felt patronizing. “Oh, you’ll do just fine in security,” she had said. “Maybe you can come work on the shields with me on slow days!”

Ratchet bullied her relentlessly for it every time he came in to fix a problem with one of the screens. Even Tim’s job looked more exciting than hers, and somehow, in a way, he was doing the exact same thing as her.

But then, Piper actually started watching the cameras, and she found she loved it.

Keeping tabs on everyone’s location made her feel connected to the crew. Anyone else would have fallen asleep at the panel, but not her; she kept a close eye on every inch of movement across the ship. She was in constant communication with her brother; Fender would send updates on people moving and she would confirm that she had seen them go. Rodney appreciated how well she was able to keep everyone accounted for and productive without feeling like they were constantly being monitored and reviewed, because Piper only reported what needed reporting.

This is how it feels to be part of a crew, she thought. This is how it will feel when I’m my own captain.

She didn’t need the medbay to feel important. Here, she was helping people.

~

Rodney: Emergency meeting, everyone.

Ratchet felt his communicator ping from his belt, but he didn’t bother picking it up. He watched Rodney send the message, after all, doing his best to hide a pained expression and still failing miserably.

Where Tim hadn’t been recognizable, Piper was horrifically herself.

She was seated in front of the cameras, right leg crossed over her left, her back pressed to the chair. To anyone walking by, it would have looked as though she was sitting normally, except her head was tilted back, weighed down towards the floor and leaving her face upside-down to stare lifelessly at Rodney and Ratchet.

The lights in her eyes were dimmed, but still open. Her speaker-shaped pigtails fell over her ears, curled in towards the top of her head, and her mouth hung open. Both her arms rested limp at her sides.

Ratchet took a brief glance at her body before looking away, disturbed. Rodney, however, couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away.

“It really happened again,” he muttered. “You were right, Ratchet.”

“I didn’t want to be,” Ratchet replied, crossing his arms. Despite the move, his posture wasn’t aggressive or defensive. He just looked resigned. Maybe even bored.

Rodney blinked at Piper, a light breeze away from tears.

“We should take her to the medbay.”

“But the meeting–”

“Can wait a minute. It’s on the way to the cafeteria. Hardly a detour.”

Rodney nodded and took a step forward, but Ratchet stopped him, holding an arm out. “I can carry her,” he said. He carried Tim earlier and figured this would be easier in a way, considering Piper wasn’t a pile of loose pieces threatening to slip between his fingers.

The only sound in the room was the soft hum of the camera monitors, flickering softly. Rodney watched as various members of the crew passed in and out of frame, making their way to the meeting he called. He opened his mouth to argue, to tell Ratchet he shouldn’t have to keep carrying bodies, but the words didn’t form. He just nodded again.

“Thanks.”

Pleased with the lack of debate, Ratchet lowered his arm and moved to scoop Piper up. He tucked one arm under her folded knees and slid the other under her neck. Rodney finally turned away from the scene when she was lifted from the chair, completely still as she sagged in Ratchet’s hold.

The walk from security to the medbay was somber and silent, save for two pairs of metal footsteps clinking against the floor and the ambient whirr of machinery across The Skeld.

When the two robots reached their destination, Rodney had managed to scrape enough of himself together to almost act like a captain again. He took a deep breath to push away the exhaustion wearing on his limbs.

Two deaths. Too much to handle for any captain over any period of time, but two deaths today... that was too much. Tim and Piper. Gone. Rodney couldn’t wrap his head around it. He pressed a firm hand to his chest to ground himself. He needed to get a grip.

“Cappy’s not here,” Ratchet said, bringing Rodney’s attention back to the present moment. He brought Piper over to the same cot Tim’s body box had been before they left. Said box was sealed and rested in the corner of the room, now. Cappy had taken care of him in the time it took them to fix the reactor.

Rodney nodded. “She’s probably waiting in the cafeteria with everyone else.” A frown pulled at his features. “I couldn’t understand why someone would kill Tim, and now– Piper? I just… I don’t get it. I don’t understand.”

Ratchet grabbed a thin sheet and unfolded it, sliding the creased fabric over the body. “I’ve got my theories, but maybe we should wait until we’re with the whole crew.”

“How can you be so calm about this?!” Rodney asked, his voice hitching. Ratchet spoke with such… nonchalance. As if it were an option for lunch he was suggesting, and not speculation on a twofold murderer. It left Rodney feeling even more on edge, a stark contrast to Ratchet’s calm. The latter robot simply turned to face him, tilting his head in response.

“What do you mean? Someone has to be.”

“Right, and that should be me. The captain. You should be grieving with everyone else.” Maybe it was a projection of how badly Rodney wished he could compose himself, but the words were out. He didn’t think they were cruel enough to take back.

Ratchet shook his head and gave a short laugh. “I’ve never been close with anyone on the Skeld, Rodney. You know that. I haven’t got enough care to grieve.”

Scoffing, Rodney said, “I can’t believe you. You’re telling me you don’t care about anyone here? Not even a little?”

Their crew had been traveling together for… well, long enough for everyone to grow attached. Long enough for Herb to know how everyone liked their oil. For everyone to forget the origin of their in-jokes.

But not long enough for Ratchet, apparently. “We all know the risks in this line of work. Things happen all the time.”

“Things like murder?” Rodney asked. His expression turned to disbelief, eyebrows relaxing as he let out a bitter laugh. “I really don’t want to point fingers, but when you act so cold–”

Ratchet swung an arm out, gesturing to Piper laying under the sheet. “Why are we even talking about this? There are bigger things to worry about right now. Meetings to be held, killers to catch, all that.” He began taking steps towards Rodney– or rather, towards the doorway behind him.

Rodney sighed and brought his fingers up to his temple. “You can’t get out of every conversation we have, you know.”

“Maybe,” Ratchet replied with a shrug. “But I can certainly get out of this one.”

Soft chatter overwrote the silence from the hall as Rodney and Ratchet approached the crew. Everyone appeared anxious or upset as they sat around the table once more, arms folded over their chests and eyebrows pinched inwards over their eyes.

Fender was the first to notice them walking up and spoke immediately. “Where’s Piper?” he asked. The rest of the table shifted in shock. Apparently, there hadn’t been much of a conversation happening prior.

Rodney could practically feel the smirk ghosting Ratchet’s features beside him, and he held up a hand to keep the electrician from speaking first. No point in drawing it out. With a sigh, he said, “I’m so sorry, Fender.”

Fender’s eyes twitched minutely, but then he forced out a shocked, barking laugh. “Hey, captain, nobody faults you for being late! Especially since you guys aren’t even the last ones here. Right?” He looked across the table and received a few wary nods from the crew, but others– Aunt Fanny, Bigweld, Cappy– just frowned.

Not everyone wanted to play into his denial. Not everyone wanted to play dumb.

Rodney felt like he was going to throw up. “Fender.” He reached out a hand, resting it gently on his red friend’s shoulder. “Piper… she– she’s dead. That’s why I called the meeting.”

Everyone’s eyes were on Fender, waiting to see his reaction. Losing Tim was one thing. Murder becoming a pattern was another.

Losing your family was something only half the crew could begin to fathom, and none of them could even come close to understanding it entirely.

“I…” Fender shook his head, disbelief clinging to him like a paint wrap. “Not Piper. Not her.”

Not when we put her in the safest place we could.

He didn’t have to say it. The look on his face conveyed the message to Rodney well enough.

Fender’s eyes flicked back and forth between Rodney’s, as if his captain was telling some cruel joke and was just waiting for the right signal to drop the bit. Rodney frowned and pulled his hand away (and Fender’s face crumpled at the loss of touch, the only thing grounding him to the moment) and moved to his open seat at the table. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

Fender alternated between looking at Rodney and Ratchet. He steeled the broken expression into something neutral, but Rodney could tell his best friend was seconds from displaying something else– maybe anger. Possibly grief. Likely just sadness. “Did you see her? I mean, was she really there, or was she like– you know, how Tim was supposedly just a pile of–”

“It was her,” Ratchet said, not making eye contact. It was as much remorse– guilt– as he could show. “She’s gone, man.”

Rodney sat down in his seat. On his right, Cappy rested a hand on his shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze. He smiled sadly at her; she returned the expression before returning her hands to her lap, folded neat and firm. Composed.

That’s all everyone wanted to be.

The seat on his left, between him and Fender, remained empty where Piper would have joined them. The brief silence that fell across the crew did nothing to fill the space. But Piper would have done it herself, were she here. She would have been pointing fingers and solving this mystery the moment everyone sat down.

Rodney didn’t have much reason to believe it, but the thought soothed something in his chest to think that she would have been as brave as was needed, were she with the crew. And no one else seemed keen on being first to speak, so Rodney did what he figured captains are supposed to do: he led.

“What I’m about to say, I don’t say to monger fear,” he began. Looking across the table, everyone had taken their attention off of Fender– who had given up on concealing his expression and was curled in on himself in grief.

Rodney took a deep breath. “I can’t for the life of me imagine that this was just one person holding a grudge of some kind. Something has happened on this ship, and someone… someone might really be trying to kill us all.”

Every robot believed him, of course. They had seen the events of the morning unfold at one point or another.

The table erupted into chaos all the same.

Aunt Fanny let out a sob, leaning against Bigweld, who watched the crew with a distance in his eyes. Rodney spared a glance at Cappy, who folded her arms and fixed him with a look that only seemed mildly disappointed. She was the one who didn’t want to incite any sort of panic among the crew. But she was also the one who thought there might be something more going on in someone’s mind.

Ratchet was the calmest one at the table, likely because this had been his theory all along. He didn’t have to say it– mentioning it to Rodney beforehand was enough. That, and he was the one who found Piper. A few minutes of processing made all the difference.

Loretta’s eye twitched. “So what are we supposed to do? We’re lightyears from the nearest docking station. Are we just supposed to harbor a killer until I can reroute us?”

“We could send them out through the airlock,” Gasket suggested from beside her son. When Rodney fixed her with a horrified look, she shrugged, and he realized where Ratchet had gotten his nonchalance from. “What? A life for a life seems fair to me. Especially now that it’s one life for two.”

“Except we don’t know who to send out,” Herb said, receiving a few nods of agreement. Most of the crew seemed quick to latch on to the idea, and Rodney couldn’t blame them. It was only natural to want to protect the majority of the crew that was still alive.

Even so, these were his friends. He couldn’t seriously imagine any of them to be killers.

Cappy spoke next. “Even if we did know, that would be– I don’t know. It doesn’t sit right with me, forcing that on anybody.”

Robots didn’t exactly need oxygen. The airlock was more for keeping the ship’s mechanisms in a reasonable state. If someone was sent into space so far from an orbit… the thought sent a shudder across Rodney’s shoulders. He found himself nodding in agreement with the medic’s sentiment.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe we should figure out who did this before we decide how we’re going to handle it.”

“And how are we gonna do that?” Fender asked quietly.

Rodney startled. His friend had never been anything less than loud before. Everything about the problem felt so unnatural, so unlike the crew’s usual behavior.

But there wasn’t exactly time to dwell on that. He cleared his head and considered the question. “Well… does anyone have any leads?”

Bigweld raised a hand, and Rodney nodded, giving him permission to speak freely. “Not everyone remained at their stations like you asked. Maybe we should start there.”

Rolling his eyes, Ratchet said, “Of course I wasn’t. I was busy taking care of–”

“I didn’t mean you, Ratchet,” Bigweld interrupted. The gray robot’s defense died in his throat. He looked shocked to find that someone wasn’t immediately pointing fingers at him for once. His bewildered expression almost made Rodney laugh.

Before he could, Bigweld turned his eyes to a different crewmate. “Loretta left navigation shortly before the reactor went off.”

Rodney’s jaw dropped slightly in disbelief. He looked at Loretta. “Is that true?”

She shook her head without hesitation. “What reason would I have to wander? I said it myself after the reactor went off; I was too far away to do anything.”

“Stop lying, my darling,” Fender said. He locked eyes with his captain. “Bigweld’s telling the truth. I saw it with my own two eyes. On the Admin table.” Loretta frowned.

“Why wouldn’t you tell the truth?” Rodney asked Loretta, choosing to believe Bigweld and Fender. They worked the admin table together. If one of them lied, it was unlikely the other would, too. That, and Loretta looked as if she hadn’t been expecting Fender to take Bigweld’s side. She wouldn’t appear so outwardly betrayed if she was being honest.

Right?

She frowned and tossed her hair over her shoulder dismissively. “I didn’t think it would be a big deal,” she said.

Right. There was no reason for Rodney to doubt himself when Loretta folded into the truth so quickly.

“Not a big deal?” Fender asked, raising his voice.

Everyone else at the table watched silently as he stood, hands pressed flat against the table and his gaze towards the floor. “We’re trying to figure out who killed my sister, my love. What could be a bigger deal than that?”

Aunt Fanny tried to calm him down, reaching a hand out over the table to ground him. “Fender, dear–”

Any indication of his usual joking self was pushed aside as Fender physically stepped away from the table. It was the farthest he had ever been from his normal self. The thought of it tightened Rodney’s chest again.

“No!” Fender said. “I don’t– I just need a minute to calm down.” He looked at Rodney once more. Slowly, he asked, “Permission to be excused from this meeting, Captain?”

No one in the crew really needed permission to do anything unless Rodney explicitly told them not to, as he had with their stations that morning. The crew were all equals, but Fender was specifically asking to leave.

Rodney couldn’t tell what it meant.

The lack of clarity made him want to force Fender to stay. If he was wandering the ship while everyone else was here, he could place traps, or hide Piper’s body, or– maybe it was a ridiculous line of thinking, but Rodney didn’t know who he could trust anymore. Not when his usually happy, joking friend was now trembling with a barely contained anger.

Then again, if Fender was the only one wandering, anything that changed on the ship could easily be traced back to him. The robot also just lost his family. Some alone time would probably do him better than being stuck listening to someone like Ratchet discuss her murder with more curiosity than urgency.

That gave Rodney enough solace to nod curtly. “Permission granted,” he said. The words felt strange, like they were too formal.

Then it clicked. Really and truly settled the thought into Rodney’s mind.

The Skeld had never taken anything so seriously before.

There had been no need. Everything ran smoothly in the past, and everyone got along well enough. The closest they had gotten to formality was during launches and emergencies, which were so few and far between that Rodney couldn’t remember what serious even meant.

But now there had been a murder– two– and that had a way of changing attitudes.

It had a way of changing people, too.

Fender left and exited the cafeteria without another word, exiting through the southern doors. They closed behind him, and a brief silence hit the table as the crew’s shock subsided.

Loretta sighed, and all eyes fell on her. “I wasn’t trying to upset him,” she said softly.

“But you did lie,” Bigweld insisted.

“Because I didn’t think it mattered! Rodney’s never told us to stay in one place before, and I figured everything would be fine. Sorry for being optimistic, I guess.”

“It’s a nice sentiment,” Rodney said, “but if we’re going to figure this out, everyone needs to be honest.”

Ratchet laughed. “You think a killer is going to tell the truth?” he asked.

That was… maybe a good point. Rodney stuttered. “I– I mean–”

“Exactly the opposite,” Cappy interjected. “A killer would lie. Anyone who has nothing to hide would be honest.” She shot a glare towards Loretta, who had the decency to look ashamed for a moment.

“Um, if we’re being honest…” Fanny gave Bigweld a nervous glance. He nodded, giving her a soft smile, and she took a deep breath before continuing. “I think it’s important that you know Fender and I weren’t actually at our stations either. I stopped by Admin and didn’t see him there.”

Bigweld just grabbed her hand gently, and she gave him a soft smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Fender left after the reactor got called.”

Rodney blinked in surprise.

Before he could get a word out, Loretta was already on it. “So he was mad about me being in Weapons when he didn’t stay put either? That feels a bit hypocritical, don’t you–”

“No, he was upset that you lied,” Herb explained.

“What were you doing in Weapons?” Rodney interrupted simultaneously.

Loretta rolled her eyes, and a slow, smug grin spread over Gasket’s face. “She was probably arming herself. What else is there to do?”

“Like hell I was,” Loretta replied. “I was taking inventory to make sure someone like you didn’t steal anything.”

“Someone like me?” Gasket asked, feigning shock. She was clearly trying to egg Loretta on. It was clearly working.

“You and Ratchet have been grinning like maniacs since Tim died,” she said, her tone sharp.

“Yeah, cause it’s the most exciting thing that’s happened on this ship since takeoff,” Ratchet replied. He and Loretta both narrowed their eyes at each other. They almost looked like cats, moments away from pouncing into a fight, all claws as they tried to make themselves look bigger than they were.

“Loretta,” Rodney said, speaking louder now. She turned to look at him. “What were you doing in Weapons?”

“I already told you. I was taking inventory. Navigation was running fine and I wanted to do a little… investigating. See if I couldn’t figure something useful out.”

“And how can we believe you?” he asked. “How do we know you aren’t lying again?”

Bigweld sighed from where he was sitting. “Because it makes sense. I hate to defend it, but Fender did the same thing. He went to Communications thinking there might be something to find.”

Rodney looked at Cappy, whose brows were furrowed in thought. She had been doing her own investigating, as much as she could from the confines of medbay. As much as they wanted to avoid panic, everyone had already taken matters into their own hands, one way or another.

He rolled out his shoulders and stretched the joints in his neck, releasing whatever tension would care to leave. “Right. Well, I appreciate everyone’s initiative, but I told you all to stay put for a reason.”

“But Piper stayed put, didn’t she?” Fanny asked. “And… and look where that got her.”

A quiet fell over the table. Even Ratchet held back his usual sarcastic remarks. Aunt Fanny was right. No one could disagree with that.

And if she was right, maybe it meant that the killer was targeting people from wherever they were most likely to be. Maybe staying put did nothing but make everyone a bigger target. Suddenly, Rodney felt sick. It was by his order that everyone was supposed to stay put. Hell– it was by his order that Piper was even assigned to Security in the first place. If he had let her shadow him as captain, none of this would have–

“So did I, though,” Cappy said. “I never left the medbay. I might be the only other person who stayed at their station, and I was fine.”

And, oh, yeah. Some of Rodney’s guilt settled, but there was too much to squash it down entirely. It could have been anyone, and maybe staying put kept some of his crew safe for the time being, but what would happen if the murderer kept killing?

“I never left, either,” Bigweld added. “And I only ever saw two people in the cafeteria, so Herb and Gasket, you must have stayed put as well.”

Both robots nodded, so Rodney put the theory out of his mind for the time being. One death from staying in location wasn’t enough to undermine the four crew members the rule kept alive. “That doesn’t bring us any closer to identifying the killer, though,” he said.

“Sure it does!” Ratchet chimed with glee.

Rodney cocked his head to one side. “Explain,” he said.

Ratchet stood from the table and began walking a slow circle around everyone. He hooked his hands behind his back, marching low like a supervillain unveiling a master plan. “If Piper stayed put, someone would have had to enter the security office to kill her, right?”

“Right.”

“So,” he said, stopping behind Piper’s empty chair. He rested his hands against its back and tugged slightly, and the chair tipped away from the table. “Anyone who didn’t leave their station couldn’t have killed her! That leaves the following suspects: Loretta…” he lifted a crooked finger towards her, and she scowled. “Aunt Fanny…” she gasped in shock as Ratchet’s finger slid to point at her. “Fender…” the empty chair didn’t move, but Ratchet pointed all the same.

Then he turned his thumb on his own chest. “And myself, as the potential killers. Well, and you too, Captain, but I was with you the whole time, so you’d have to be pretty sneaky to get away with it.”

Rodney didn’t appreciate how cheerful Ratchet sounded about his accusations, and made such a feeling apparent on his face. “It wasn’t you, either. Someone would have shown up in security on the Admin table, then, wouldn’t they? Bigweld?”

He turned to look at the rotund robot, who had his hand pressed to his chin. “I don’t remember ever seeing anyone else in the room,” he said. “But I wasn’t paying much attention after the reactor went off. It was hard to focus.”

“No one entered before that?” Cappy asked. Bigweld shook his head, looking confused. “That means whoever killed Piper did it after the reactor started freaking out. They probably used it as cover.”

“Oh, they definitely did,” Ratchet said.

“What do you mean?” Loretta asked. “It was just convenient timing.”

“Except Rodney and I fixed it, and when I looked at the log, there was no discernable issue. Someone tampered with it remotely.”

Herb was looking more concerned by the second. “Who even has the clearance to do that?” he asked.

“No one, other than maybe Rodney,” Cappy said, though she didn’t sound convinced by her own words. “Why would you…?”

“I wouldn’t,” Rodney said. “I didn’t.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Ratchet confirmed. No one looked convinced by his words, but he continued nonetheless. “He would’ve needed his communicator to do it unless he had some crazy mind powers. Whoever tripped the system was alone when they did it.”

Rodney frowned. “But the only suspects who would have been alone were…”

“Fender, who wasn’t alone until after the reactor had gone off,” Ratchet began.

Capp’s expression morphed into shock, eyebrows slowly raising as she turned her gaze. “And Loretta, who was by herself the whole time.”

From her chair, Loretta froze.